ROY SCHOEMAN, HARVARD PROFESSOR WHO SAW THE VIRGIN MARY: ‘SHE TOLD ME THE NAME OF GOD, AND I FELL IN LOVE WITH HER’
Today, January 17, the Catholic Church celebrates Judaism Day. In this name, we bring a wonderful testimony about a Jew and a Catholic.
“My parents were observant European Jews, who fled to the US to escape the Holocaust. I grew up as a conservative Jew and was quite pious, very enthusiastic about religious studies and all religious activities, begins his story Roy Schoeman , also a professor from Harvard who accepted Jesus Christ and became a Catholic through the miraculous intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary .
Passionately lived Judaism in his youth
After school, he would go to the synagogue every day for Jewish programs. Until high school, Judaism was the focus of my entire identity and activity in the world. I was very connected with my rabbi and several seminaries, my Hebrew teachers. One of the highest-ranking rabbis in the US, president of the American Jewish Congress, adviser to several presidents, and author of a series of best-selling books on Judaism and Jewish history, he was my everyday friend. So I grew up unusually devout and passionate about Judaism. In high school, however, I met a very charismatic mystic, a Hasidic rabbi who traveled around the country playing the guitar and led spiritual seminars of Hasidic worship, preaching and teaching. He had a great influence on young Jews so that the following summer I joined him traveling through Israel with him. I wanted to live my life for God and with God, and I even wanted to replace my plans to study at MIT by studying at one of the Jerusalem studios for young monks. However, I was soon excluded from that group because I recognized a certain coldness and sterility in them that did not lead me to reality and intimacy with God, testifies Schoeman, who after that returns to the USA to study at MIT, and testifies that this is when the period of greatest execution ever begins in his life.
Lost enters the New Age
I lost the relationship between faith and morality, especially sexual morality. Soon I indulged in drugs and the ‘free love’ of the hippie culture I was present in, which very quickly bore the fruit of an immoral and obscure occult hippie spirituality. My thirst for God has now been replaced by the false comforts and crazy spiritualities of the new age of that time. For the next 15 years, I lived like this in a huge inner tension. I have always longed for the transcendental and this longing led me through various spiritualities that only temporarily satisfied my longing. After I graduated from Harvard Business School, I was invited to join Harvard as a professor. Even that success couldn’t replace the senselessness I was in at the time. Doctorate, master’s degree, my profession as a professor, students, they were all involved in my false comfort, which was supposed to create my false meaning of life.
First mystical experience: I discovered God in nature
I loved nature, I loved being alone in nature because that way I could experience the majesty of God. So I started skiing and doing various activities to fill the void but I was getting more and more desperate. Once, standing alone on the Alps, I felt an indescribable joy in my heart. I was in awe of God’s creation. That feeling stuck with me for the next few years. During 1987, I took a few days off from work and went to Cape Cod to spend time in nature. In the early hours of the morning I was walking on the beach when God intervened, dramatically and clearly, in my life. As I walked, lost in thought, I found myself in the immediate presence of God. That experience was like someone suddenly pulling me into the sky. Everything changed from moment to moment, but in such a smooth and subtle way that I myself was not aware of the transition from moment to moment.
Above the earthly
I felt the strong presence of God. I became aware of the infinite sublimity and infinite personal love that God has for me. I saw my whole life from His heart and I could see what would have happened if I had decided differently at some point. I saw that every decision I made and every action I ever took served either good or evil. I saw that everything that happened in my life was perfectly designed for my good by the infinitely wise hand of God, and this especially applies to those moments that I considered the greatest disaster in my life. I saw that I was dying every time I wasted my time, when I did nothing worthwhile in God’s eyes, and how much time and energy I wasted worrying about how to be loved, even though every moment of mine was bathed in a sea of infinite love that I did not was aware. I liked that the meaning and purpose of my life was to worship and serve my God in whose presence I found myself. But… then I wanted to know his name so I could serve him properly.
Anything is possible, as long as you are not a Christian God
I remember quietly saying to Him: Tell me your name. I don’t mind if you’re Apollon, I’ll become a Roman pagan. I don’t mind if you are Krishna I will become a Hindu. I don’t mind if you are a Buddha, I will become a Buddhist. It’s all good as long as you’re not Kristi, so I don’t have to become a Christian. This prayer and resistance to Christ was deeply rooted in my Judaism in which Jesus was presented as the greatest enemy of the Jews. It’s not surprising, but he didn’t tell me his name then, because obviously I wasn’t ready to hear the truth, to hear the answer precisely because of my prayer.
A year of days of prayer
When I returned home everything was different. I went in search of God again, that God I met that day on the beach. I went into mysticism, which again and again led me to dead ends, I also went through new age religions and various meditative practices and occultism. I stuck to Hinduism the most even though I didn’t feel half fulfilled. However, every night before going to bed, he would say a short prayer with the desire to know the name of my God in whose presence I was on the beach.
He sees Our Lady and she speaks the name of God to him
Exactly one year after my experience, I went to sleep after my prayer and after a while I felt a hand on my shoulder. I got up and went to the room where I was alone with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and that is impossible to imagine. I knew it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. I felt that I was fully awake, amazed by her presence and splendor, I regretted that I did not know how to pray at least one Hail Mary to honor her. She offered to answer all the questions I had. I remember all my questions and all Her answers. She also answered me the name of my God. It was Jesus Christ . When I woke up the next morning I was incredibly in love with the Blessed Virgin Mary, I had a deep knowledge that the God I met on the beach was Jesus Christ and that I must become a Christian. I didn’t know anything about Christianity then, and I didn’t even know the difference between the Catholic Church and all the Protestant denominations. It took me two years under the guidance of the Blessed Virgin Mary to find the Catholic Church.
I was looking for Mary in the Churches, I found her in the Catholic one
I started from the local Protestant church, but when I asked the pastor about Mary, he always belittled her, so I immediately understood that the presentants could not be in the truth. I started visiting Maria’s shrines then especially the La Salette shrine which was 40 minutes from me. I went in silence to a Carthusian monastery for a week with the monks and there I felt a longing to receive Holy Communion. Namely, I was still formally Jewish and could not receive Holy Communion. One day a monk approached me and asked me why I don’t receive communion, if I’m not a Catholic, then what am I? Then I told him that I was Jewish, and he said: what a relief, we thought you were a Protestant. I didn’t know why it was better to be a Jew than a Protestant, so the monk explained to me that the Jews are our brothers in faith who have not yet received the grace to recognize the messiah, while the Protestants received this grace and rejected the fullness of the truth. This realization further confirmed my effort to become Catholic, and I was soon baptized in the Catholic Church. I attend daily holy masses, and prayer and the Eucharist are the center of my life. Everything I do, I do under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary who led me to the truth about Jesus Christ.
